J 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




011898 984 3 ^ 



HoUinger Corp. 
pH8.5 



'b7? the epidemic 

Copy 1 



OF THE 



NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



By E. BOYDEN, 

(!.)f popcbalf, CAlbcnr.dlr (''uimfii, C);r 



RICHMOND: 

CIIAS. II. WYNNE, PRINTED, 94 MAIN STREET. 
1860. 






^ /-5 



J 



/ V 



THE EPIDEMIC 



NINETEENTH CENTURY, 



^^. 



^ 



il 



Bt e. boyden, 




BICHMOND: 

CHAS. H. WYNNE, rKINTEE, 94 MAIN STREET. 

1860. 



aV 



THE EPIDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 



In looking back on the history of mankind, one is struck 
with the fact that a false and pernicious sentiment now 
and then seizes upon the mind and conscience of a people, 
and rages among them, in a way strikingly analogous to 
those epidemic bodily maladies which, " walking in dark- 
ness," afflict communities for awhile, and then pass away. 
The Crusades, and later, the Witch mania, were moral 
epidemics spreading far and wide, and raging at some 
points like the plague, the Asiatic cholera, or the African 
fever in foul cities. Who does not see that the Crusades 
were truly a spiritual malady, morbidly affecting the judg- 
ments of men, deranging the mind and conscience, instead 
of the vital organs ? An honest sense of religious duty 
seized upon and urged forward the Crusaders to deluge 
nations in blood — all for the honor of Christ. Who but 
now sees, that in the age of Witchcraft, honest men — judges, 
such as Sir Matthew Hale, and Lord Coke, and most 
learned divines as well, took leave of their senses in pur- 
suing pious and harmless old women to the death, under 
charges, by modes of trial, and upon evidence such as idiots 
only could well be supposed capable of listening to for a 
moment. In all cases, these distempers are seen strangely, 
most strangely, to becloud the intellect, sicken the sensi- 



4 THE EPIDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

bilitics, disorder tlic fancies, and pervert the conscience. 
Look at the terrible consequences of the devout hallucina- 
tions of the Crusaders, and of the believers in Witchcraft, 
and it will appear, that a diseased moral or religious senti- 
ment, while it is infectious as the plague, may become a 
thousand times more destructive. If it advances to the 
stage of fanaticism, it becomes a demoniacal possession, 
scattering everywhere fire-brands, arrows and death — all 
for the love of God and man. Every thoughtful mind 
sees in Fanaticism the madman of the ages, appearing now 
and then, here or there, mysterious, undying, and often 
talking of Christ, as is reported of the Wandering Jew. 

Is there a diseased moral sentiment pervading the North 
on the subject of Slavery ? Let the many writers and 
speakers there who denounce slavery, and the wailing 
sympathizers with John Brown, " the martyr," confessing 
himself guilty of the crimes of treason and murder, give 
answer. Is there yet another mad Crusade proclaimed in 
the world ? To the sober mind it must appear so ; and 
the writer would fain make a solemn appeal to the judg- 
ment of God on the subject, as given in certain undeniable 
facts of His word — facts, the import of which, it were hard 
to believe, any two intelligent truth-loving minds can 
disagree upon ; and no honest mind could wish to evade. 

It is boldly proclaimed and widely believed, that slave- 
liolding is wrong — wrong in itself, a sin per se, which, of 
course, no circumstances can so affect, as to render justifi- 
able. That question cannot be determined, save by the 
one only standard of right and wrong known to Christen- 
dom, namely ; the Holy Scriptures. Discussed on general 
principles assumed from speculative reasoning and indi- 



THE EPIDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 1) 

vidual convictions, a question like this might be argued 
forever. It can be brought to a decision only by the 
authoritative voice of our Divine Teacher. We have no 
principles, no basis of morality to build upon, out of the 
Bible. The argument to be presented makes, in none of 
its legitimate bearings, to justify the slave-trade, or slave- 
making ; but simply regards slave-holding in the actual 
circumstances ; and it is urged in the belief that God 
designs thereby, not the depression, but the final exaltation 
of a barbarous race. 

1st. Of the three dispensations of God, when He came 
forth to reveal and establish His religion, it is a fact of 
some significance, that the first or patriarchal, was intro- 
duced among slave-holders. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
were the heads of the earliest Church, admitted to its 
covenant, and constituted its chiefs, by the act of God 
himself. They were slave-holders, possessing many bond- 
men and bondwomen, "born in the house" of their master, 
or " bought with his money." Abraham possessed " three 
hundred and eighteen men, born in his house;" together 
with their wives and children. (Gen. xiv. 14.) He had 
others also, " bought with his money." (Gen. xvii. 13.) 
In his last days, Abraham " gave all that he had unto 
Isaac, his son." (Gen. xxv. 5.) Of Jacob, Isaac's son, it 
is also said, " He had much cattle and maid servants and 
men servants." (Gen. xxx. 43.) Now these patriarchs 
were, taken into most intimate fellowship and communion 
with God. He called himself *' the God of Abraham, of 
Isaac and Jacob," and approved their piety. Moreover 
He commended Abraham, it may be justly said, more 



6 THE EPIDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

tlian any other man that ever lived, holding him up as an 
example to all good men, through all subsequent revelations. 
Did Abraham live and die in atrocious wickedness ? Our 
blessed Lord so regarded his purity of character, as in one 
of Ilis parables, to substitute the expression, " Abraham's 
bosom," for Heaven itself. 

'2d. The second, or Jewish dispensation, was introduced 
among a free people ; that is, freed slaves, who were all on 
an equality. The Israelites went forth out of their house 
of bondage no doubt, like the freed slaves of Jamaica, or 
the serfs of Russia ; holding, of course, no slaves in their 
own sore bondage. They are described to us going forth 
out of Egypt as servants, " with their kneading troughs 
bound up with their clothes" — this being their little all — 
" upon their shoulders ; " driving before them cattle for 
sacrifice, which Pharaoh had refused to allow them to 
take, until the last and most dreadful plague. Not per- 
mitted to rear even their own sons to be Pharaoh's bondmen, 
they could not have been permitted to rear or possess bond- 
men for themselves. They came out then free, and thus 
constituted what we call a Free State, of which God him- 
self took charge as its civil ruler. Under His divine 
administration — the Theocracy — this Free State was after- 
wards changed to a Slave State. So the inspired record 
appears very plainly to teach. In the third month, or as 
computed, just fifty days after leaving Egypt, the people 
of God stood at the foot of Sinai, and there received amid 
the thunderings and lightnings of the mount, the laws 
that were to rule their state. First, the law of the Ten 
Commandments — their fundamental law, or constitution, 



THE EPIDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 7 

as I may justly call it — was given ; and then a code of civil 
laws based thereupon. Now looking into these divine 
legislative acts, they are found to constitute a slave code, 
just as distinctly and broadly, as the laws of any Southern 
State of this Union. We find, in the first place, slavery 
recognized in their fundamental law — the Ten Command- 
ments. We read therein of " thy man servant, thy maid 
servant, and thy cattle;" and again, of "his (thy neigh- 
bor's) man servant, his maid servant, his ox, and his ass." 
And secondly, we find among the special statute laws, 
several concerning servants, which, of course, define the 
meaning of that term, as used in the Commandments. 
Hebrew servants may be bought for a limited period, but 
not compelled to serve more than six years. (Exod. xxi. 2.) 
These are to be treated as hired servants ; not as bond- 
men. (Lev. XXV. 39.) Then another class is spoken of as 
" his (the master's) money. (Exod. xxi. 21.) Concerning 
these there are further enactments, which issued from that 
awful Presence on Mount Sinai. This is one: "Both thy 
bondmen and bondmaids which thou shalt have, shall be 
of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall 
ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the chil- 
dren of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them 
shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, 
which they begat in your land ; and they shall be your 
possession, and ye shall take them as an inheritance for 
your children after you, to inherit them for a possession ; 
they shall be your bondmen forever." (Lev. xxv. 44-46.) 
This law was not to take effect until after forty years, 
that is, it was, in its very terms, made prospective of their 
settlement in Canaan, forty years thereafter. Now, as a 



8 TUE EPIDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

fact of inspired liistory, it "was then that slavery was first 
introduced, and tliat by a divine law, into the Jewish 
Free State. The chapter of laws from which I have just 
quoted, is prefaced thus : " And the Lord spake unto 
Moses in Mount Sinai, saying, Speak unto the children 
of Israel, and say unto them, AVhcn ye come into the 
land which I shall give you;" then, such and such laws 
shall be observed. The ordinance of the passover, given 
earlier, just after they came out of Egypt, had the same 
remarkable prospective bearing. " And it shall come to 
pass, that when ye come to the land which the Lord will 
give you, according as lie hath promised, that ye shall 
keep this service." (Exod. xii. 25.) " There shall no 
stranger eat thereof, but every man's servant that is 
bought with money, when thou hast circumcised him, then 
shall he eat thereof." (Exod. xii. 43.) No clear, unpreju- 
diced mind can, I think, resist the conclusion, that under 
the administration of God, as civil governor, the Hebrew 
Free State of the wilderness was, after forty years, changed 
by the act of God, into the Hebrew Slave State of Canaan — 
not for the worse assuredly, but some how, for the better ; 
for the enlightenment and general good, we may believe, 
of the degraded heathen bondmen round about; who should 
thus be brought under the light of revelation, and into cove- 
nant with God, But if it were thought possible that the 
Hebrew slaves coming out of Egypt, themselves held slaves, 
and thus constituted a slave state from the first ; and if this 
utterly unauthorized conceit, were conceded to be the fact, 
it would yield no support to the abolitionist. For then the 
overwhelming fact must be accepted, that God, as a civil 
ruler, once issued of His own will a slave code of laws, and 



THE EPIDEMIC OF TUE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 'd 

legislated forty years beforeliand, for the more abundant 
supply of His people with slaves, when they would need 
laborers in cultivating the promised land. The abolitionist 
is bound, undoubtedly, to shew how it could have happened, 
under his view of slavery, that this sin, " this abomination 
of all abominations," if not legislated into existence, was 
legislated into enlargement and perpetuity by God himself, 
who, in the four hundred years of His civil administration, 
made no movement towards abolishing it. 

3d. The last or Christian dispensation was introduced like 
the first, among slaveholders. The Apostolic Churches were 
composed of masters and their slaves, just as the patriarchal 
and Hebrew Churches had been ; all under the open direction 
and express inspiration of God. All three were thus com- 
posed precisely as the Church now is in our Southern States 
— a Church so mourned over or denounced, both in New and in 
Old England. Those terrible words of anathema against a 
slave-holding Church and people which resound through the 
North, and which, until recently, came booming across the sea 
from the utterances of publications so respectable and Chris- 
tian as the North British Review — on whom do they, beyond 
the possibility of denial or doubt — on ivho77i do they fall first, 
most directly a7id most heavily, but on the great Originator, 
the Head, Lawgiver and Patron of this slave-holding Church 
of all ages and of all dispensations ? Let any sane man 
answer, and decide upon the moral quality of such anathe- 
mas. The fact that the Apostolic Church was slave-holding, 
and with conseyit of the Apostles, is, of course, undeniable. 
" Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters ac- 
cording to the flesh, knowing that whatsoever good thing 



10 THE EPIDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

any man docth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, 
■whether he be bond or free." (Eph. vi. 5.) Again : " Let 
as many servants as are under the yoke, count their own 
masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his 
doctrine be not blasphemed ; and they that have believing 
masters, let them not despise them, because they are breth- 
ren ; but rather do them service, because they are faithful 
and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach 
and exhort" — these things — namely, that slave-holders, the 
masters of servants under the yoke, are to be counted 
worthy of all lionor ; that believing masters are Christ's 
"brethren," faithful and beloved, partakers" of the spir- 
itual benefits of His gospel. Do our Northern pulpits, plat- 
forms, schools, religious papers, thus teach and exhort ? 
AVhat doubt can there be of the fact that they do not thus 
always, or even in general, teach and exhort ; but far " oth- 
erwise ;" and what, then, saith the Holy One ? He pro- 
ceeds to declare in words most plain and solemn : " If any 
man teach otherwise" — otherwise than that masters are 
tcorthrj of all honor, ^-c. — ^^ and consent not to wholesome 
words, even the ivords of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the 
doctrine which is according to godliness " — in this matter 
of masters and their bondmen — "Ae is jjroud, knowing noth- 
ing, hut doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof 
comcth envy, strife, railings, evil surniisings, j>erverse disput- 
ings of men of corrupt minds." (1 Tim. vi. 1-5). A prophetic 
description, how exact ! of the present state of the public 
mind, brought about by those who have been teaching 
"otherwise," than that believing masters are *^ brethren, 
faithful and beloved.'' The passage just quoted from St. 
J*uul, lias an application in these times, which surely no 



THE EPIDEMIC OP THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 11 

honest mind can mistake — a pointed, personal application 
that cannot be escaped. 

4th. " As ye would that men should do unto you, do 
ye also to them likewise." " Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
as thyself." Now it is a fact, plain and unquestionable, 
that the Son of God, who gave these golden precepts, and 
illustrated their true import by Ilis example, did not openly 
denounce slavery and slave-holders ; nor did He take any 
action against the institution. Did our blessed Lord under- 
stand them aright ? If so. His action under them deter- 
mines the fact, that they do not, in their true meaning, 
require, or justify, or permit, either denunciation of or 
action against slavery as an unlatvful institution. His ex- 
ample forbids any other meaning, or course of conduct, if it 
forbids anything to His followers. That the Apostles who 
spake and acted as " they were moved by the Holy Ghost," 
so understood the matter, and followed the Master's exam- 
ple ; one and all abstaining throughout their ministry from 
denunciations of slavery and slave-holders, is another fact 
plain and incontrovertible. . So, then, if Christ and the 
Holy Ghost were right, they are infallibly wrong who give 
such meaning to those precepts as obliges or allows them 
to anathematize slavery as a sin, and preach a crusade 
against slave-holders. Surely he is more bold than Chris- 
tian who shall dare to interpret a precept, and take a course 
of action under the same, in direct opposition to that of Christ 
and his inspired Apostles. "What ! a Christian man dare to 
stand in plain and palpable antagonism to Christ in a point 
of duty and right ! Not unless he is demented, or Christian 
but in name ; for, in all soberness, such daring can come 



12 THE F.riDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

only of ik'lusion or tbc Devil. The follower of Christ must 
take the same direction, and go the way Christ goes ; other- 
wise, he is no follower at all. To say that a man going 
East follows another who is going West, were as true and 
sensible as to say a man may follow Christ by walking in 
a way just the contrary to that which He trod. 

5th. The Roman government upheld slavery to the ut- 
most, and both Christ and his Apostles, instead of raising 
a voice against it, always spoke of it without censure, 
required submission thereto, and set the example of obe- 
dience. This, as a fact, is unquestionable. " Let every 
soul be subject to the higher powers. For there is no 
power but of God ; the powers that be are ordained of God. 
Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordi- 
nance of God; they that resist, shall receive to themselves 
damnation." (Rom. xiii. 1.) " Render unto Cffisar the things 
that are Cesar's." " Put them in mind to obey magistrates, 
to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers." "The ruler is the 
minister of God to thee." This, of the government at Rome; 
tins, of a ^^slave potver," so named and spoken of now in scorn 
and detestation ! In view of the teaching of Christ and his 
Heaven-inspired Apostles, who is so blind as not to see 
that no man can denounce a government because it vpholds 
domestic slavery/, without, in the same act, and by the same 
breath, denouncing the Son of God and the Holy Ghost, 
both in their doctrine and in their example ? Yet the gov- 
ernments of the South, because upholding an inherited 
slavery, arc spoken of in unmeasured terms of reprobation 
by not a few who call Christ Master. They plot politically 
for the destruction of those States ; and some, gone raving 



THE EPIDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 13 

mad of this moral mania, seize fire and sword and gloat over 
the prospect of drowning all the South in seas of blood — all for 
philanthropy and the love for God ! The extreme malignant 
cases, thank God, are not many, but in this whole anti- 
slavery rage of every degree, what is there at all that is 
Christ-like in spirit, or in any thing else ; or rather, what is 
there that is not anti-Christ in spirit, voice and action ? 
There is, indeed, a show of philanthropy about it ; but if true 
philanthropy, most assuredly, as any child may see, Jesus 
Christ and his Apostles were not philanthropists. 

6th. Slaveholding has been sometimes put in the same 
category with polygamy and divorce. But this is in defi- 
ance of the broadest distinction known to law and legislation. 
" Granting, it is said, slavery to be divinely permitted under 
the Old Testament, it does not follow that the permission 
continues under the New ; for polygamy and divorce, once 
allowed, are not ^w allowable." They have, indeed, been 
distinctly disallowed, and the law concerning them changed. 
But such is not the case with slave-holding. That is left 
as it was, unchanged by a single word or intimation. They 
are annulled, this is not, under the later Divine legislation. 
That is the difference — the difference between a law an- 
nulled, and another law not annulled. By the plainest 
canon of interpretation, whatever in the Old Dispensation 
has not been annulled or changed, is lawful still. No prin- 
ciple is clearer. The Apostles held to it undoubtedly, and 
acted upon it in this particular case, when they permitted 
believers to hold slaves, but admitted not polygamists into 
their Church ; no trace of polygamy being found therein. 
All agree to this view except the New Lights of Utah. 



14 THE EPIDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

The Scriptural fact, that the old law permitting slavcholding 
remains unchanged, untouched, is entirely undeniable ; but 
the present latvfulness thereof, is, strangely enough, denied 
still, by certain New Lights of New England ; who, as- 
suming the position that slavery is a sin, and the most 
damning of all sins, do, of necessity, excommunicate and 
give over to Satan, the whole South ; nay, the whole Chris- 
tian Church of the past, with the Hebrew and Patriarchal 
Churches ; nay, their own Puritan forefathers as well, who, 
in fact, were pro-slavery, slave-owning, and slave-trading. 
Their teachers and leaders (such as the kindly philanthro- 
pist, AYm. L. Garrison, and that transcendently great and 
lucid Hindoo-German philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
who lately bade us look to " the gibbet in Charlestown as 
being glorious even as the Cross on Calvary,") do first, 
indeed, excommunicate themselves, by openly denying Christ. 
Alas, for those — few I hope in number — who turn away 
from their fathers and their fathers' God, to follow the 
wisdom of such teachers, whose muttered oracles come up, 
from the gloomy caverns of infidelity and atheism ! 

The facts relied on in this paper, may be succinctly 
expressed thus : 

1st Fact. God chose slaveholders as the heads of his 
earliest Church, and honored them in the highest degree as 
good men ; spoke of their bondmen, and directed to bring 
them into covenant with Himself. 

2d Fact. God gave from Mount Sinai a slave code of 
laws, to a people over whom He had assumed the position 
of civil governor, wherein he initiated slave-holding, or estab- 
lislied and enlarged the same, by directing the people where 



THE EPIDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 15 

to buy slaves, and how to hold them, as a " possession and 
an inheritance to their children." For four hundred years, 
God stood at the head of, and administered this slave-holdinor 
government, without changing or relaxing its provisions. 

3d Fact. The Gospel was introduced into a slave-hold- 
ing community ; and the Apostolic Church, under the guid- 
ance of God, was composed of slave-holders and slaves ; and 
the masters divinely pronounced to be "worthy of all 
honor; brethren faithful and beloved, partakers of the bene- 
fit ; " and those who '■'' teach otherwise^" condemned in terms 
clear and strong, as inspiration could find in human language. 

4th Fact. Our blessed Lord and His inspired Apostles 
did not denounce or take any action against slave-holding, 
under the golden rule of love to our neighbor ; thus demon- 
strating by their example, that this rule neither requires 
nor permits open religious opposition to slavery. 

5th Fact. The Roman Government upheld slavery to 
the utmost extent, and both Jesus and Plis Apostles upheld 
the Roman government, and required all Christians to do 
the same; "to obey magistrates," and not even "speak 
evil " of those who administered the slave laws of the empire. 

6th Fact. The laws concerning polygamy and divorce 
were expressly annulled by our Saviour: those relating to 
slave-holding loere not; but remained in force, and the 
Apostles acted upon them as unchanged, in admitting slave- 
holders to the Church, while they excluded polygamists — not a 
trace of polygamy being found in the New Testament Church.* 

Now, it is humbly submitted, that every Christian mind is 



* It ■will be time to add to the number of the facts when these shall be 
shewn to be insufficient — to deny them uo man shall be found bold enough. 



10 THE EPIDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

bound to weigh tlicse divinely attested facts, -with calm and 
earnest thougbtfulness. If they oppose his own notions, he 
will remember that even "the foolishness of God is wiser 
than men." Surely these facts duly considered, do disclose 
most distinctly, the mind of God on the subject in hand. 
Look at them unmingled with human speculation, untainted 
by mortal breath ; for as Scriptural facts they are God's 
utterances; and what is their import? He who can shew 
that they pronounce slavery in itself a sin, and slave- 
holders as such, sinners; nay, graceless reprobates, according 
to the new-born theology, may hopefully undertake to do 
the most impossible things. Surely these facts should quench 
the lurid blaze of that portentous new-light philanthropy, 
which glares around, whose teachings, instead of " good 
will to men," are bitter revilings against those whom God 
in all ages has honored, and declared by an Apostle " to 
be worthy of all honor as faithful brethren" of Christ. 
"Who can pretend that its teachings are of love ? but if 
they are not, then is it a new religion, the opposite of 
Christ's — a "religion of hate," as it has been defined by 
one of the first men of the day who lives amid its utter- 
ances and beholds its fruits. The inexorable logic of facts 
demonstrates it to be a religion anti-Christian and false. It 
is time to speak plainly, when grave and learned senators 
are found blasphemously pronouncing that to be a mere relic 
of barbarism — a sin like duelling and murder — that, which 
was an clement in the civil Theocracy of Jehovah, and was 
admitted and has continued to be, an element in the perpetual, 
spiritual Theocracy of Christ. 

For eighteen centuries there was but one interpretation 
of the facts to which I have called attention. For all 



THE EPIDEMIC OP THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 17 

that period, men understood the Scriptures to teach that 
slavery is an allowable institution, not a hideous sin, or any 
sin at all, however undesirable as an institution of the State. 
If, then, the modern discovery, that the Scriptures make it 
a sin, is maintained, the infidel asks, with resistless force, 
what are your Scriptures worth as a rule of life, when it 
takes eighteen hundred years of critical study to discover 
that the blackest of human sins, one everywhere prevalent, is 
any sin at all ? Why, allowing three generations to a cen- 
tury, fifty-four generations of men, with your plain and per- 
fect rule of life in hand, went down to the grave, their souls 
blackened with the life-long practice of a terrible crime. 
What then is your book good for ? And no reply is possible, 
if slavery be a sin — and infidelity infallibly triumphs. 

Several religious bodies of the North have separated from 
their brethren of the South, because to sit at the same 
Lord's' table, or to hold any other ecclesiastical communion 
with slave-holders, is held to be sinful. Even a general po- 
litical connexion brings some taint ; though a connexion for 
trade, for buying, selling and making gain, has not yet 
been made a subject of complaint. Now, it is plain, that 
for the same reason identically, namely, for slave-holding, 
these good people could not have communed at the same 
Lord's table, or held any connexion with the Apostolic 
Church — never, of course not. For the masters then held 
property in men, their bond-servants {that is, in tlieir services 
only, as nozv,) ; and it is this property interest- which con- 
stitutes the sin as charged. If this be not a new religion, 
another gospel, what could be ? The one allows what the 
other disallows ; the one honors whom the other holds up 
to scorn and reproach ; the one saves whom the other damns. 



IS THE EPIDEMIC OF TUE MNETEENTII CENTURY. 

He -who shall make the two accord, may proceed confidently 
to shew that the Koran, the book of Mormon, and the Bible 
inculcate the same creed. To break the force of this, and 
justify the new abolition doctrine, it has been said that the 
gospel teaches not so much by precepts as by principles, 
•which are " developed " as the world advances. A won- 
derful development, indeed, has taken place on this subject 
zvitJiin these feiv anti-slavery years! What was no sin at 
all with xVbraham and Moses — with Paul, and the Christian 
fathers, and the old Puritans, has suddenly "developed" 
itself into the most atrocious of human crimes ! The gospel, 
indeed, teaches by principles as well as by precepts ; and, 
as time passes, and new subjects, employments and relations 
arise, there is a certain development in the application of 
principles. Put that the finished law of the unchangeable 
God, made upon, and applied to, a specific and existing sub- 
ject, has so changed that it now condemns as enormous 
guilt what (as this notion of development itself confesses) it 
did not condemn at all formerly, though existing everywhere, 
is surely, to a healthy Christian mind, impossible of belief. 
The notion is manifestly either a confusion of thought, or 
the surrender of inspiration — nonsense or infidelity. To 
believe and act as Christ and His apostles believed and 
acted, on a given point of essential right or wrong, without 
looking for anything higher or better than their faith and 
example, would seem pretty clearly to be the true position 
of a Christian man. But let this "development " idea pass. 
It is the latest barricade thrown up — and surely of "such 
stuff as dreams are made of" — by the religious revolutionists 
of the day ; and, ucll generaled as it is, cannot stand. No 
other than a mind obscured, or frenzied by the present one- 



THE EPIDEMIC OF TUB NINETEENTH CENTURY. 19 

idea malady, could accept the notion as true and sound. 

There is, palpably, such a malady abroad. Observe ; we 
have, first, the beclouded intellect, just noted — then the dis- 
ordered fancy, painting horrors in slave-land, purely imagi- 
nary as the poet's cloud-land dreams — then the diseased 
sensibility, which weeps and wails over fancy sketches of 
sins and sorrows, not its own, and not near, but another 
people's, living far away over green fields and swelling 
rivers — a people who are very like themselves and the rest 
of mortals in their sins and sorrows — and, finally, we have 
the perverted conscience, that makes light of "love, peace, 
long suff"ering and gentleness" towards a neighbor, and 
justifies railing and reviling, not to say fire and sword, against 
him — all for philanthropy and the love of God ! 

And this strange sentimental malady of the century is 
manifestly epidemic. It has spread far and wide over the 
North, lighting on city after city, village after village, work- 
shop after workshop, especially in old Massachusetts, once 
so sound, robust and heroic. England, too, has been visited. 
There not a few may be found, whose ears are ever turned 
westward, intently listening across the wide ocean, to catch 
the groans of contented Christian negroes, fast advancing 
in intelligence, and better off, both for comfort and for im- 
provement, than any other considerable portion of that peo- 
ple on earth. Only through ignorance, or misconception 
of their condition at the South and elsewhere, will any man 
venture to deny this to be the fact. Most other races are 
better ofl" than is the African, wherever found. The black 
race demands, therefore, great sympathy in its deep depres- 
sion. In its enfeebled, childhood-like state, it solicits, what 
above all things childhood needs, kindly but authoritative 
2 



20 THE EPIDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

restraint. There are, no doubt, evils and sorrows among 
that people, whether bond or free, which need to be amended 
and assuaged. But are there no evils and sorrows to be 
amended and assuaged among the more favored nations? 
England regards herself at the head of Christian and civi- 
lized nations. The wealthiest of all, free and powerful, she 
possesses beyond others the means to correct the evils and 
relieve the sorrows of her people. Let the philanthropist, 
then, visit her great factories. Among the million of ope- 
ratives, let him mark the numbers of cadaverous men, pale 
women, and rickety children, cooped up in overheated, dusty, 
poisoned rooms. Let him then go forth and lay his ear on 
the green sod of his happy island, honey-combed with mines, 
and listen for the sighs and sorrows of the weak and weary, 
troglodyte population' beneath. What may he hear from 
those thousands upon thousands of Anglo-Saxon blood and 
English hearts — begrimed, emaciated — men, women and chil- 
dren, often born and nurtured in those sunless depths — 
their life-long home of toils and tears — where they dig for 
bread, breathing sickly gases, amid chilling damps and 
darkness ; do these English bosoms ever heave and swell 
with groans — heavy, helpless, hopeless groans ? Possibly ; 
but the modern "good Samaritan" passes by on the other 
side. Even his quickened sense does not hear a whisper 
from below, and the poor suiferers are left unavenged, un- 
aided, unwept, because forsooth they are free — free to toil 
and rot in their caverns, with no one to care for them ; no 
one of better fortune, whose interest and legal obligation 
would bind him to provide for their comfortable support, 
in return for moderate sun-light labor. Are not "life, lib- 
erty and the pursuit of happiness," the glorious Anglo-Saxon 



THE EriDEMIC OP THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 21 

birth-right, boon enough for them ? And so the demented 
philanthropist turns away to exhaust his energies of una- 
vailing sympathy on the easy, full-fed African, beyond sea, 
in the open sunlight, and amid balmy breezes, perchance 
picking cotton with thumb and finger from the opening bolls, 
instead of spinning and weaving the same in suffocating 
rooms ; or swinging the heavy pick-axe, or dragging the 
human coal-cart fifty fathoms under ground. Is the remedy 
for these and such like miseries to be postponed till uni- 
versal freedom is attained, and the whole earth becomes one 
beautiful French dead-level, of " Liberty, Equality and Fra- 
ternity ? " Alas, then, for the hopes of vast multitudes of 
the Anglo-Saxon, and of every other race, save the Ethio- 
pian ; and, alas, for that too ! 

No man can shew from the Scriptures that God loves 
slavery. The Bible presents all men as standing equal before 
their Creator, and is thus the great spring and source of 
civil liberty. In His Word, God limits slavery and protects 
the free in their freedom, by annexing the penalty of death 
to the crime of stealing and selling a man. In His provi- 
dence, He makes a way to freedom for every people, as they 
become fitted for it ; when alone it comes as a blessing. 
This, all history demonstrates. When it is considered how 
God deals with the subject of slavery in His Word, and how 
He has dealt with it in His providence among the nations, 
through past ages, why may not this institution be conceived 
of, rather why must it not be taken, as part of a wise 
economy, which He employs, as He employs strong institu- 
tions of government, for the ordering of affairs in this dis- 
ordered world, among a race depraved, lawless and utterly 
uncontrollable by any possible force of moral suasion, even 



22 THE EPIDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

by the authority of the Omnipotent? Slavery is only of this 
fallen ^vorld. Liberty, under many necessary checks, comes 
to us as the companion of virtue and intelligence. It is more 
a thing of Heaven than of earth. What would universal, 
unchecked liberty and equality make of this Avorld but a 
perfect Pandemonium? Restraint, control, subjection, in short, 
to some force, moral, physical or political — all used of God, 
as seen in revelation — is the great want among men ; and 
is, emphatically, a necessity for the advancement of ignorant 
and degenerate races ; that is, to effect their submission to 
the divine law of labor, and keep them from preying upon 
each other. This subject is less understood perhaps than 
any other spoken of in Christendom.* 

It may relieve the stress of this subject on some minds, to 
notice that slave-holding is not strictly a question of morals 
and religion at all — not more so than any other of the social 
institutions of mankind. It is dealt with in the Holy Scrip- 
tures always as a matter of civil government — undoubtedly 
so. The relation of master and bondman is spoken of, and 
never with censure, as an existing fact, and rules of con- 
duct under that relation are prescribed for both parties. In 
other words, slave-holding is regulated precisely as other 
social institutions found among men are regulated — upon the 
principles of virtue and human brotherhood. The family 
itself, with or without slaves, is, in its true and Scriptural 
idea, a little commonwealth or kingdom, of which the chil- 
dren and the servants, bond or hired, are citizens or subjects, 
and the master of the house is governor, or sovereiffn ruler. 



* Tliis will barflly be doubted by any one -who reads Dr. Bledsoe's incom. 
purable discussion of the subject, in Lis book entitled " Liberty and Slavery." 



THE EPIDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 23 

He must give to all in their stations, what is "just and 
equah" In this his duty and virtue, or morality, consist. 
The citizens and subjects of this miniature realm must be 
respectful, obedient and faithful in service, to their head, as 
well as loving to each other ; and herein their duty and 
morality in that relation consist. But take slave-holding 
either way. As a question of morals, or as one in intimate 
connexion with morals, and the appeal here made to " the law 
and to the testimony" of the Unerring Mind, must be ac- 
cepted as the true and decisive one. The decision thereupon 
has appeared, at every point, too plain to be misappre- 
hended; and that decision must be received and confided 
in as true and final, or otherwise we forfeit the name and 
style of Christian people. We fall back among the heathen ; 
or among certain philosophers of the day — falsely enough 
so called — and find ourselves in a dark and gloomy region, 
where the pale ghosts of moral and religious ideas wander, 
unsettled forever. If anything may be boldly affirmed, surely 
this may be, that the decision of the Bible is, not — that 
this institution, as a hideous monster of iniquity, has reposed 
unrebuked in the bosom of the Church, the Bride of Christ, 
from the beginning of the world ! 

The subject in hand has not only been carried into morals 
and religion, and falsely regarded as a purely ethical one, 
but taken also into party politics. A little history explains 
it. A pure-minded zealot across the waters in the past cen- 
tury, struck a faint spark of abolitionism. It kindled abroad 
slowly — was brought over and kindled slowly here. After 
awhile, it caught the attention of certain cunning crafts- 
men in politics. Soon they set themselves earnestly to fan 
it into a blaze for their own ends. Succeeding in. this,. 



24 THE EPIDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

under false pretences — the moral and religious — they have 
been seen for twenty years, busily employed in shaping by 
the li"ht and heat of that blaze, the gods they Avorship — 
Popularity, Place and Power. Men of like ingenuity are 
wanting nowhere in our land. Let them ply their trade — 
not however unrebuked, when they would sacrifice to their 
idols, both the public peace, and the immortal interests of 
truth and religion. 

In conclusion, let the attention of thoughtful minds be 
called to a remarkable law of compensation, by which God in 
the arrangement of his providence in regard to slavery, 
makes large amends to the bondman for his loss of personal 
liberty. In His economy, God lays upon the master's 
shoulders, that which constitutes the great load and burden 
of life to every poor man. What is the chief misery of 
poverty and labor, but the painful anxieties and struggles, 
often almost hopeless, to make provision for a family ; to 
furnish food, clothing, a home, a physician in sickness and 
support in old age. From this galling burden of the poor, 
God frees the slave. With a heart so relieved from care 
and bitter anxiety, he goes forth to his labor day by day, 
and the master trudges on in life by his side, carrying, so to 
speak, that poor man's wife and children as a load upon his 
back ; and this, together with his great and solemn respon- 
sibilities, make the master feel as he is often heard to say, that 
of the two, he has tlie harder task, God does not love 
elavery..* It is an institution of government and guardian- 
ship, which He sometimes employs to bring back degenerated 



* God docs not love the universal lot of labor and sorrow, to vhicli all 
men tre iu bondage by Lis own assignment. Gon. iii. 17, 19. Lam. iii. 33. 



THE EPIDEMIC OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. ZO 

races, -whose liberty to follow nature sunk them where they 
are, and would continue to sink them lower and lower 
towards the brute. The idea of the inherent wickedness 
of slavery, is becoming heated to the point of explosion : 
whether the rage will quietly subside, or whether, like some 
other false religious ideas of past ages, it Avill pass away 
amid terrible convulsions of society, God only knows. Base- 
less in reason, as in Scripture, like the wild frenzy of the 
old Crusades, this epidemic "African fever" shall infallibly 
pass away : not, perhaps, till it has disjoined and destroyed 
this otherwise sound and well compacted body of States, 
glorious in their youth and strength and happy promise. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



011 898 984 3 






J 



J 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



011 898 984 3 



